Listener
Listeners A Listener in the Lockwood and Co. universe is a term used to describe a child with psychic talents that allow them to hear ghosts. This can mean that they hear the sounds that the ghosts are making, like whispers and taps, or that they can speak with the ghosts. Most ghosts are too weak to speak, but a few motivated Type Two ghosts have been known to repeat a few phrases here and there. The fabled Type Three ghosts that were written about in the Fittes Manual have been known to speak, although nobody has encountered one except for Marissa Fittes herself and Lucy Carlye. Listening is one of the three main talents. The others are Sight and Touch. Sight is the most common Talent, but many psychic agents possess combinations of them. Listening is a very valuable and rare talent. It allows the agent to make a connection with the ghost and find the motive of them faster. It can also help them sense when a ghost might be coming and can help them track down where the source might be. Notable Listeners Marissa Fittes, who was one of the first psychic agents along with Tom Rotwell and who opened the Fittes Agency, was a Listener. It is said that her listening powers were the strongest that the world has ever seen. Her powers gave her the ability to communicate with ghosts and hear what they were saying. She briefly wrote about the Type Three ghosts that she had encountered in her Fittes Manual, but they were so rare that most agents regarded them as a myth. However, it is later revealed (along with many other things) in The Empty Grave that Marissa did in fact communicate with Type Three ghosts. She communicated with the Skull briefly, before deciding that he was intolerable and then throwing him out. In her younger years before she became an agent, she met a powerful Type Three ghost named Ezekiel, which she befriended. Ezekial became her companion, and through him, she learned several important things about ectoplasm and the other side. Lucy Carlyle is also a powerful psychic Listener, along with her abilities of Touch and Sight. She grew up in Northern England and worked for a small psychic agency. After an accident with a ghost, she moved to London and began working with Lockwood and Co. In the Screaming Staircase, she hears the voice of Annabel Ward. In the same book, she also hears the screams of the monks on the staircase at Combe Carey Hall. In the Whispering Skull, she communicates with a Type Three ghost and befriends him, more or less. The relationship of Lucy and the Skull grows throughout the rest of the series. Although her powers are strong, they are also dangerous. Because of her keen listening and touch, she feels sympathy for the ghosts, and that can get her in a bit of trouble sometimes. She is always trying to communicate with the ghosts that she encounters, but sometimes the ghosts don't want to be friendly with her. Her relationship with her Type Three ghost is noticeably different from Marissa's. While Marissa wanted to extract psychic knowledge from Ezikeil, Lucy seeks the Skull as a consultant on her cases, because he can help her sense things that she sometimes can't. Slightly Less Notable Listeners It is briefly mentioned in the first book that George is an all-arounder, meaning he has fair sight, listening, and touch. However, it never describes how George uses his listening or touch abilities since Stroud only describes how he sees things. George certainly has never heard the Skull talking at Portland Row, but perhaps that is because only the most talented listeners can communicate with Type Threes, or that maybe Type Threes can control who hears them talk. Either way, this is a loophole in the books, and it could be possible that Stroud just forgot about this. Kat Godwin is also a Listener, although she is not as talented as Lucy or Marissa. (She is called Kat in the first two books, but Kate in the Hollow Boy, which is yet another minor detail that Stroud missed.) She is an agent about Lucy's age who works for the Fittes Agency. She was on Kipps' team with the late Ned Shaw and Bobby Vernon, before Kipps lost his job and she was more than likely reassigned to another team. There is no other mention of her in The Creeping Shadow and The Empty Grave. In The Whispering Skull, it is mentioned that she also has listening skills, although they are not as good as Lucy's. In Bickham's house, they both hear the rats scurry around them, and they are both terrified.